Book picks similar to
The Lonely Desert by Sarah Challis
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marjorie-aitchison
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Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems
Billy Collins - 2013
Containing more than fifty new poems and a generous gathering from his collections of the past decade-Horoscopes for the Dead, Ballistics, The Trouble with Poetry, and Nine Horses-Aimless Love showcases the best of his poetic maneuvers: the everyday ends in the infinite, playfulness is paired with empathy, irony gives way to wonder. Possessed of a unique voice that is at once plain and melodic, Billy Collins has managed to enrich American poetry while greatly widening the circle of its audience.
D-Day
Al Hine - 1962
Here is the dramatic story of that climatic battle and the men who planned and fought in it. The Normandy invasion altered the course of World War II and led to the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of the Third Reich. It is a story of courage and fear, tragedy and determination.
Reggie Kray's East End Stories: The lost memoir of a gangland legend
Reggie Kray - 2010
Reggie wrote his EAST END STORIES in the early 1990s, but they haven't seen the light of day until now. In the book, he recalls the close-knit East End community in which he and his brother grew up, the characters in his family and neighbourhood, and of course, the many villains he worked with. Filled with anecdotes about the area’s most outlandish personalities and notorious criminals, and offering a fascinating journey around the Krays’ ‘manor’ including their favourite haunts and business enterprises, the book paints a vivid portrait of a London that has long since disappeared.
From the Heart: Tonight and Always / Endings and Beginnings / A Matter of Choice
Nora Roberts - 1996
This collection will appeal to a new generation of Nora Roberts fans.Tonight and AlwaysWhen a renowned anthropologist agreed to help a writer research his new novel, she wasn't prepared for the passion their collaboration would spark...A Matter of ChoiceAn international smuggling ring traps a beautiful antiques dealer and a New York City cop in a web of danger and desire...Endings and BeginningsTwo Washington television reporters try to protect their love from their own professional rivalry-and the hazards of their celebrity...
The Buenos Aires Broken Hearts Club
Jessica Morrison - 2007
But when she loses her Perfect Job and finds her fiancé in bed with his ex on the same day, it's clear that The Plan has failed her. She awakens the next day from a drunken stupor to discover that she's booked herself on a six-month trip to Buenos Aires. She speaks not a word of Spanish, but she's already emailed the news to everyone she knows, so there's no turning back. Once in Buenos Aires, Cassie is reluctantly seduced by this glorious city. Her exuberant landlady introduces her to the handsome but haughty Mateo, a man Cassie clashes with right from the start. She soon befriends other lovelorn travelers and together, they start a "Brokenhearts Club" at a local bar, attracting a cast of characters that includes Dan, a sweet handsome man who lives as carefully and predictably as Cassie. Before long, Cassie's making a new plan: 1. Learn Spanish. 2. Stop obsessing about impossible Mateo and fall for perfect-on-paper Dan. But staying on track isn't so simple anymore and Cassie finally realizes that sometimes life--and love--defies her best-laid plans.
French Silk
Sandra Brown - 1991
The founder of French Silk, a fabulous lingerie company, she has fought hard to make it a worldwide success. Then a TV evangelist attacks French Silk's erotic sleepwear as sinful. And when he is killed, Claire becomes the prime suspect. District Attorney Robert Cassidy knows Claire is damning herself with lie after lie about the murder, even as he feels her drawing him into her world and her very soul. But neither Cassidy nor her protests of innocence can save Claire unless she reveals a shocking truth—one she has sworn to take to the grave...
Laura
Larry Watson - 2000
Laura
Love captures Paul Finley, in, of all places, his own bedroom -- literally waking him from his dreams. The night he discovers Laura Pettit standing at his windowsill, Paul is eleven years old, a boy naturally inclined toward seriousness, precociously adept at the art of watching the world without being watched. Laura is twenty-two, a fiercely passionate and independent poet already experiencing the first flickers of fame, a beautiful woman on the brink of seducing Paul's father. No matter; Paul is smitten. When she leaves him to rejoin the grown-ups' party downstairs, Laura issues Paul a wholly impossible command, one that will haunt and consume both of them for the rest of their lives: "Forget me." Laying bare the inner life of one man during the course of nearly four decades, Larry Watson delivers a riveting treatise on the excruciating power of love -- and two of the most remarkable characters in recent American literature. Infused with breathtaking pathos and delicate grace, Laura is an extraordinary triumph of the novelist's art.
The Island of Heavenly Daze (Heavenly Daze Series #1)
Angela Elwell Hunt - 2001
It is decorated with graceful Victorian mansions, carpeted with gray cobblestones and bright wild flowers, and populated by sturdy, hard-working folks-most of whom are unaware that the island of Heavenly Daze is not just like the other islands of coastal Maine. The small town that crowns its peak consists of seven buildings, each inhabited, according to divine decree, by an angel who has been commanded to guard and help anyone who crosses the threshold. Unexpected hijinks and heart-warming results occur when mortals and immortals cross paths-and unaware visitors to the picturesque establishments of Heavenly Daze discover that they have been entertained by angels.
The Shell Collector
Anthony Doerr - 2001
Doerr explores the human condition in all its varieties-metamorphosis, grief, fractured relationships, and slowly mending hearts-and conjures nature in both its beautiful abundance and crushing power. Some of his characters contend with tremendous hardship; some discover unique gifts; all are united by their ultimate deference to the mysteries of the universe outside themselves.
Minding Frankie
Maeve Binchy - 2010
But as a single father battling demons of his own, Noel can’t do it alone. Fortunately, he has a competent, caring network of friends, family and neighbors: Lisa, his unlucky-in-love classmate, who moves in with him to help him care for little Frankie around the clock; his American cousin, Emily, always there with a pep talk; the newly retired Dr. Hat, with more time on his hands than he knows what to do with; Dr. Declan and Fiona and their baby son, Frankie’s first friend; and many eager babysitters, including old friends Signora and Aidan and Frankie’s doting grandparents, Josie and Charles. But not everyone is pleased with the unconventional arrangement, especially a nosy social worker, Moira, who is convinced that Frankie would be better off in a foster home. Now it’s up to Noel to persuade her that everyone in town has something special to offer when it comes to minding Frankie.
A Night on the Orient Express
Veronica Henry - 2013
Luxury. Mystery. Romance.For one group of passengers settling in to their seats and taking their first sips of champagne, the journey from London to Venice is more than the trip of a lifetime.A mysterious errand; a promise made to a dying friend; an unexpected proposal; a secret reaching back a lifetime...As the train sweeps on, revelations, confessions and assignations unfold against the most romantic and infamous setting in the world.
The Lubetkin Legacy
Marina Lewycka - 2016
Hilarious new novel from the bestselling author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian.North London in the twenty-first century: a place where a son will swiftly adopt an old lady and take her home from hospital to impersonate his dear departed mother, rather than lose the council flat.A time of golden job opportunities, though you might have to dress up as a coffee bean or work as an intern at an undertaker or put up with champagne and posh French dinners while your boss hits on you.A place rich in language - whether it's Romanian, Ukrainian, Russian, Swahili or buxom housing officers talking managementese.A place where husbands go absent without leave and councillors sacrifice cherry orchards at the altar of new builds.Marina Lewycka is back in this hilarious, farcical, tender novel of modern issues and manners.
The Lightkeeper's Daughters
Jean E. Pendziwol - 2017
No longer able to linger over her beloved books or gaze at the paintings that move her spirit, she fills the void with music and memories of her family—a past that suddenly becomes all too present when her late father's journals are found amid the ruins of an old shipwreck.With the help of Morgan, a delinquent teenager performing community service, Elizabeth goes through the diaries, a journey through time that brings the two women closer together. Entry by entry, these unlikely friends are drawn deep into a world far removed from their own—to Porphyry Island on Lake Superior, where Elizabeth’s father manned the lighthouse seventy years before.As the words on these musty pages come alive, Elizabeth and Morgan begin to realize that their fates are connected to the isolated island in ways they never dreamed. While the discovery of Morgan's connection sheds light onto her own family mysteries, the faded pages of the journals hold more questions than answers for Elizabeth, and threaten the very core of who she is.
Every Inch of Her
Peter Sheridan - 2004
Philo announces herself at their door one Sunday evening with the words, "God pointed me here." A large presence, weighing 240 pounds and bearing tattoos on her arm, Philo smokes, swears, and loves to eat. She is also a mother of five and in flight from her abusive husband, Tommo. In no time at all, Philo has made herself indispensable. At the senior Daycare Center, she gets the old folks talking to one another, singing old favorites, and playing bingo again. And with all the love she's got to give, it's only natural that she helps Cap and Dina-two people at the Center long separated by a bitter feud-come together again. By turns comical and tender, Peter Sheridan's novel is a beautifully written portrait of an unforgettable woman who touches everyone she meets through the sheer force of being herself.
Bonfire
Krysten Ritter - 2017
Now working as an environmental lawyer in Chicago, she has a thriving career, a modern apartment, and her pick of meaningless one-night stands.But when a new case takes her back home to Barrens, Indiana, the life Abby painstakingly created begins to crack. Tasked with investigating Optimal Plastics, the town's most high-profile company and economic heart, Abby begins to find strange connections to Barrens’ biggest scandal from more than a decade ago involving the popular Kaycee Mitchell and her closest friends—just before Kaycee disappeared for good.Abby knows the key to solving any case lies in the weak spots, the unanswered questions. But as Abby tries to find out what really happened to Kaycee, she unearths an even more disturbing secret—a ritual called “The Game,” which will threaten the reputations, and lives, of the community and risk exposing a darkness that may consume her.With tantalizing twists, slow-burning suspense, and a remote, rural town of just five claustrophobic miles, Bonfire is a dark exploration of the question: can you ever outrun your past?